Glossary

This is a short list of terms frequently heard in Second Life. Please suggest others for this list.

ad farm – a tiny parcel of land, often only 16 sqm, on or above which floats advertising images, sometimes placed deliberately to spoil the view of nearby landowners and encourage them to buy the parcel at an inflated price. Linden Lab considers the latter a terms of service (TOS) violation.

alt – alternative account. When a resident holds more than one Second Life membership account. All that aren’t a main account are alternative accounts.

AO – animation overrider. A script that can be purchased in Second Life for use by an avatar to substitute more lifelike walks and poses for the default animations.

AR – abuse report. The usual way of reporting terms of service (TOS) violations via a Second Life menu.

av, avatar, avie – a character in Second Life, usually referred to as a person or a resident. A new resident is a newbie.

bye bye – the parties are separating or leaving.

cam – the act of zooming and panning the viewer’s camera

chat – words typed in chat are visible to all people within 20 meters of the speaker. Optionally, the speaker may shout and the words will heard all the way across the sim in which the speaker is located.

cool – very nice.

economy – Second Life has a monetary system, a consumer price index, a currency exchange market for buying and selling linden dollars in U.S. dollars.

emoticons – dozens of different keyboard symbols in use to depict emotions of the writer. The symbol 🙂 is happy 🙂 and 😦 is sad.

furry – humanoid avatars who look like animals or mythical creatures. The oldest community of furries in Second Life is Luskwood.

geography – Second Life is a virtual world generated in a computer and composed of virtual land masses that have been divided into continents and then subdivided into regions. Each region is a simulation running on its own Internet server at Linden Lab. The entire virtual world, known as the grid, has coordinates so specific places can be referred to by their latitude and longitude coordinates. To move from place to place, avatars can walk, fly or teleport. Residents can open a world map and zoom in and out to see details.

gorean – a Second Life roleplaying culture emulating the John Norman novels about Gor, a city-state society with a caste structure that includes priests and slavery. Roles include master and mistress slave owners, slave girls and boys, free men and women.

goth – a Second Life subculture of dark warriors, demons, vampires, etc.

grid – the basic structure underneath all of the Second Life world. The grid is subdivided into thousands of regions simulating physical surface geography. Linden Lab provides the grid and residents build the superstructure and surface infrastructure. Sometimes the grid goes down temporarily for maintenance.

griefer – an avatar acting as a vandal or attacker who is harassing other Second Life residents by using offensive language, bumping, generating trash objects to leave on land, or other activities that intentionally disrupt another resident’s in-world experience. Sometimes someone being bad just for the fun of it. A griefer can push, cage or otherwise impede movement of an avatar or shower a user’s screen with images or sounds. Griefing is most common in new user (newbie) and heavily populated areas. Griefers’ main attacks can be negated by having the victim avatar sit down or by teleporting to another location. For that reason, it’s a good idea to set a Home location (via the World tab at the top of the screen) as soon as possible after entering Second Life. This gives an escape route via the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+H. Remember, there is no real danger in SL, just inconvenience caused by the griefer. Griefing attacks should be reported to Linden Lab as they violate the terms of service (TOS). Click any person or object and go to the third layer down in the pie menu to file an AR (abuse report).

group – a club or organization of two or more residents.

haha, hihi, jiji, yiyi – laughing.

Help Island – A tutorial area in Second Life. Another is Orientation Island. Help Island (HI) allows activities to be selected and is not mandatory.

home – your place to return to if you become disoriented while traveling in SL. The shortcut to home from anywhere is CTRL+SHIFT+H.

HUD – heads-up display,  visual display of preset options as part of the user interface (UI)

in-world – being inside or online in a virtual world

instant message, IM – a private one-to-one message sent to a specific person who need not be at your current location. Not the same as chat. IM messages are stored when people are offline, but the recipient’s IM mailbox can become full and thus capped, which means that later messages may force earlier ones from the list of stored messages. Each person has an option in Preferences to have incoming IM messages forwarded to her or his or her RL email.

inventory – the place where items you own are stored when not in use. The inventory is like a pocket for carrying around stuff. The kinds of items in the inventory include animations, body parts, calling cards, clothing, gestures, landmarks, notecards, objects, snapshots, scripts, sounds and textures.

IRL – in real life.

k, kk – ok, okay, okie.

landmark, LM – a shortcut address that enables a Second Life resident to teleport to another place, it has the required coordinates of a location in SL that can be obtained and used by clicking an object the gives LMs.

Linden – an employee of Linden Lab, the company that produces Second Life. The entire LL staff have Linden as a last name for their avatars.

Linden Lab, LL – common name for Linden Research Inc., the company that owns, controls and hosts Second Life.

lindens, linden dollars, L$ – SL money that has a fluctuating exchange rate like any other currency. The virtual currency can be traded for US$ or US$ can be used to buy L$.

LindeX – the Linden Dollar Exchange, a currency exchange trading dollars for lindens and lindens for dollars.

LM, landmark – a geographic location specifier in Second Life. An LM specifies a location by region name, latitude, longitude and vertical distance.

lmao – laughing my ass off.

lol – laughing out loud.

LSL – Linden Scripting Language used to program objects in SL.

mdr – French version of lmao, mort de rire means “died of laughing.”

megaprim – an extraordinarily large prim.

newbie, noob – new resident of second life.

notecard, NC – an inventory item that holds information, usually as text, but also embedded textures, photos, objects, or other notecards.

np – no problem, no worries.

NPIRL – not possible in real life.

Orientation Island – the tutorial area where all new Second Life users start out. Unlike Help Island, Orientation Island (OI) is directed and mandatory.

preferences – a set of configurable usage parameters for the SL viewer. They are used to control how the viewer looks, sounds and feels to the user.

Pres-0-Matic – an automated display board for visual presentations, like a PowerPoint screen in RL.

prims, primitives – primitive geometric shapes, the raw 3D objects from which everything in SL is constructed. A basic building and creation material. Linden lab provides these so anyone can build. Every object, hair, eyes, clothes, houses, furniture, cars, boats, plants, animals, snow, fog, etc. are created from prims by the people who use SL. All things are created from these basic building blocks. They come in several shapes. Each land area can support only a certain number of prims. For example, a basic 512 square meter plot of land will hold only 117 prims. This means a small lot will allow only for a small house with limited furnishings.

ratings – each region is approved for either general, moderate or adult activities.

real life, RL – The natural world where we live when not visiting Second Life.

region – a simulation, as in a virtual region of the Second Life world that simulates a physical environment. A region, also called a sim, is an area hosted by a single server CPU. The SL grid is subdivided into thousands of regions. Each Second Life simulator is independent with its own characteristics, rules, ratings (general, moderate, adult), and themes.

resident – an avatar or character in Second Life. A new resident is a newbie.

rez, rezz – to create or spawn an object in the Second Life world. Also used to refer to the sharpening of the image seen on the computer monitor screen. It’s a term from the movie Tron.

rez date – the birth date of an avatar, when the Second Life resident’s account first was registered

rofl – rolling on the floor laughing.

RP – role play.

say – words typed in open chat that are visible to anyone within 20 meters of the speaker.

Second Life, SL – the 3-D virtual world published and maintained on the Internet by Linden Research Inc. (a.k.a. Linden Lab) of San Francisco. It is built entirely by its residents.

Second Life Time, SLT – the same as Pacific Time in California because Linden Lab is there. SLT is the same as PST or PDT depending on the time of year in RL.

shout – words typed in chat that are visible to all people across an entire sim.

sim – simulation, as in a virtual region of the Second Life world that simulates a physical environment. A sim, also called a region, is an area hosted by a single server CPU. The SL grid is subdivided into thousands of regions. Each Second Life simulator is independent with its own characteristics, rules, ratings (general, moderate, adult), and themes. A virtual place hosted on a single computer CPU server.

SLT – Second Life Time, local time in Second Life. It’s the same as Pacific Standard Time (PST) because Linden Lab is located in San Francisco, California.

SLURL – short for Second Life URL, a web address for a place on the virtual world Second Life. URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator, the address of a page on the Internet.

sqm – square meters, a 2D measure of land quantity. A basic plot of land that can be purchased is 512 sqm. Larger plots are available.

teleport, TP – a main method of moving around from place to place in SL. It is an instantaneous transport from one set of coordinates to another. Teleporting is not the same as flying.

Terms Of Service, TOS, Community Standards, CS – the standards for behavior of residents or the laws of Second Life.

TSL, Teen Second Life – the former teen grid (TG) for persons 13-17 years of age at a time when the larger main adult Second Life grid was only for persons 18 years and older. TSL was absorbed into the main grid in January 2011.

ty – thank you.

UI – user interface.

voice – used for talking instead of traditionally typing.

welcome area – a designated location in Second Life new users (newbies) are sent after passing through Orientation Island.

whisper – words typed in open chat that are visible to anyone within 10 meters of the speaker.

windlight – sky, water and atmospheric lighting effects in Second Life.

yw, yvw – You’re welcome, you’re very welcome.